The Design Inspiration For Our First Home

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Less than two weeks until Matt and I close on our new house! Ahhh! We are getting so excited and have been dreaming about what we want to do in our new home. The past couple of weeks have been full of signing lots of documents, making a list of all the projects, and figuring out a plan and design style for our home. We have all of August with both our house and our apartment, so we want to get as much done as possible in that month.

To make sure we were on the same page, we had a “meeting” with Matt as the project manager and me as the interior designer. We went over our budget, timeline, and future projects so we can stay organized throughout it all. Being the engineer he is, Matt has all of the projects we want to do, the materials we need to get, and a plan for each day of August on our Excel spreadsheet. I’ve been in charge of all the design decisions, which is much more up my alley than spreadsheets 🙂

Our Inspiration:

Now for the projects…

New Home Projects:

• Scraping all the popcorn ceilings
• Applying knockdown and painting ceilings
• Greige paint in the basement
• Muted olive green paint in the bedroom
• Painting the kitchen cabinets and bathroom vanities
• Replace kitchen and bathroom faucets
• Replace light fixtures
• Install new cabinet hardware

Here’s our plan for August:

Quick Design Mockups

To make design decisions easier, I used Photoshop to make some quick design mockups of some of the rooms. Since we’re not changing the layout of the home and don’t have all of the measurements, these were easier than full-on renderings, while still giving us a visual of how it will look.

Bedroom

In the bedroom, the plan is to remove the popcorn and do knockdown on the ceilings and paint the walls a muted olive green. We also want to replace the current fan/light to a simple black fan with a light that is much more our style.

Dining Room + Living Room

The dining room is open to the living room, so we want these spaces to flow together. In this space with the vaulted ceilings, we plan on replacing the chandelier over the dining table, plus a new fan. For now, our plan is to use our current furniture and add in a rug with the wood floors.

Kitchen

In the kitchen, we’ll be painting the upper cabinets white and the lowers and the island black. Since we have white appliances, doing the two-tone kitchen will work well now and in the future when we eventually get stainless steel appliances.

The plan is to switch out the pendant over the sink for a flush mount. Right now, it’s blocking the peek through window to the dining room and a flush mount will keep it more open. We also want to replace the cabinet hardware from white and gold pulls and knobs to all black pulls.

Also in the kitchen, we will be using peel and stick tile over the linoleum for a quick and inexpensive update for the floor. Eventually, we will probably tile the kitchen floor, but for now want to give it a simple refresh.

Also in the kitchen is a little nook to the right of the island. Eventually, we want to make this space into a breakfast nook with some built-ins benches, but the plan for now is to create a little breakfast bar with a wood top and some stools.

We will also paint the cabinets white and swap out the hardware in the laundry since it’s right off the kitchen.

Bathrooms

The plan in the bathrooms is to paint the vanities black. Since the sink and countertop are a neutral white, we’ll replace the faucets from gold/chrome to black. We also plan to frame out the large glass mirror and replace the sconce lighting.

We’re so excited to take you along on this journey!